Wound and Buried
by Hazgarn
Summary: Unconnected one-shots from various points of view speculating on Sylar's future. Post "An Invisible Thread".
1. Happy Birthday, Mr President

A/N—I've had the whole Sylar!Nathan concept running through my head ceaselessly ever since the finale. I'm working on a multi-chapter story on the subject, but my mind keeps throwing out alternate possibilities that distract my attention from working on it. I figured I might as well get those out of my head as quickly as possibly so I can focus on the "real" story that I want to. So this is basically going to be the dumping ground for Sylar!Nathan one-shots that aren't part of _In Sheep's Clothing_.

* * *

_"My life, my life, now I speak of it as of something over, now as of a joke which still goes on, and it is neither, for at the same time it is over and it goes on, and is there any tense for that? Watch wound and buried by the watchmaker, before he died, whose ruined works will one day speak of God, to the worms."  
_—_Samuel Beckett, Molloy_

* * *

Forty-nine was a young age for the Presidency. Not the youngest ever to hold that office, by any means, but enough for his relative youth to be remarked upon during his campaign. Especially when he was in the same shape he'd been at thirty-nine. By the end of his second term he was fifty-seven years old, and it had become a joke on late night television. It wasn't until he was out of office, past the stressful pressures of State and other such worries, that he let it bother him that he hadn't aged a day.

He shared his concerns once with his mother in a private moment. She was in her eighties now, still possessing that same fierce dignity as always, but showing all those years nonetheless. She'd dismissed the concerns from his mind as trivial. Perhaps too quickly.

When he reached his sixtieth birthday, it had become conspicuous. Peter looked older than he did now, so blatantly obvious and _wrong_ that it was beginning to wring his heart every time he looked at his brother. At sixty-five, he went into seclusion, hiding from reporters, avoiding interviews. His achievements in office were long past and forgotten by most, but his name remained fresh in the minds of a shallow public, a society obsessed with retaining its youth.

At home, the topic had become an elephant. No one talked about it. Not his wife. Their reconciliation had become poisoned slightly by envy and doubt, memories of his past affairs and fears of future indiscretions. Not his sons... He could pass for their contemporary if his face were not so well known. Not Peter. His second glances had begun to take on a note of suspicion. Not Ma, who wouldn't tolerate the topic being discussed at all, now. He hadn't seen Claire in almost five years. His memory of their last meeting was dominated by the image of her delicate features written deeply with revulsion. Of course, the irony was that she still didn't look a day over eighteen.

In 2037, he saw her for the first time in over a decade. Bennett had died a week earlier. The same disgust lived in her eyes now when she looked at him, her still young face distorted and stained with tears for the man who had been a father for her. He had not been able to meet those eyes for long. He was caught by blind surprise when she fell against him, unable to stop from winding his arms around her. He held her like a thing made of glass as her ragged sobs devolved into raw, grief-filled screams. Half an hour later she was calm and still. They sat together in complete silence, her head resting against his chest. His shirt had become soaked with her tears but he ignored it, arms still around her, fingers stroking her hair softly. Her voice was a strangled, hoarse, dead thing when she finally spoke, rising almost inaudibly from her tortured throat.

"You were right."

Her words resounded with a broken defeat. He didn't know what she was talking about, but he decided not to ask. If he didn't, he wouldn't have to deny that the words had been his. He wouldn't have to wonder if that was a lie. Instead, he found himself lifting her chin, slowly, planting a kiss on her cheek. The action coaxed forth another small sob. His second kiss shocked them both. After she'd gone, he was left sitting alone, a hand pressed firmly over his mouth. His eyes were shut as the tears ran over his fingers and he remembered the taste of her sweet mouth. He tried to convince himself that the bile that rested bitterly on his tongue was his own.

They never spoke after that.

Former U.S. President Nathan Petrelli died in 2042, less than a month after his wife's suicide. His sudden heart attack had come as a shock to much of the nation. He'd always been so...vital. The casket was closed for the funeral, denying the curious a peek at how their Young President would have looked in his seventies. His remaining friends and surviving family-brother, sons, daughter-were remarked by the public as being oddly reserved. To the perceptive, the grief they projected could be traced not to the coffin, but to the dark-eyed young man standing at the edge of the crowd. For a very select few mourners, there was anger in their eyes as well.

For some of them, they were seeing Sylar's face for the first time since Coyote Sands.


	2. Come Into My Parlor

Anyone who has ever sat and watched a spider as it folded an insect into its web could tell you. There was something fascinating about watching predation when the prey wasn't you.

She knelt, still and silent on the floor, her legs as weak and useless as they'd been after the accident. Her breath felt trapped inside her lungs. She didn't know if it was fear, or the children that clung to her so tightly. On either side her sons stared, no more able to pull their eyes away than she.

Across the floor, their grandmother was dying.

She could only watch him as he worked, his face an expression of vacant concentration as he examined every inch, every curve with an almost careful touch. What he was seeing, reading she could not even begin to guess, but after a subjective eternity he let Angela drop. She fell solidly, stiffly, lifeless and with empty eyes. Her blood pooled onto the carpet, staining what remained of her hair. It coated his fingers where he stood, so calmly, the corners of his mouth lifting in amusement at whatever he'd learned.

"Sweet dreams, _mother_." His low, flat voice somehow manifested a pale humor in its lifelessness.

There was something fascinating about a predator when the prey wasn't you.

When he turned around, when his dark eyes fell on her, she thought she might find the strength to scream. All that issued forth was a strangled noise, a sob. It was all she could do with her trembling hands, weak arms, to push her children behind her, against the wall, behind her. As he moved toward her, long strides eating the distance between them, those eyes pinned her like a knife. He knelt down before her, bringing his face level with her own. When the monster had emerged, façade of her husband melting away, part of her sanity had broken at his unspeakably cold gaze. It had frozen her, just as it had frozen Angela. Angela would never move again.

The look in those eyes was different, now, as he watched her. The look was just as consuming, predatory, lustful. But there was nothing cold about it. She was chilled by his fingers where they brushed her cheek. She shivered as the blood rolled down her chin. His thumb caressed the skin just beside the corner of her mouth. Lightly, lightly. For all her wanting, she could not pull away. The gentleness of the kiss was tainted by the smell of blood, the metallic taste of fear on her tongue.

After he'd gone, she lifted a trembling hand to her face. Her fingers came away red.

He was gone, but he'd left her with a stain.


	3. What Rules the World

_Woman, how divine your mission  
Here upon our natal sod!  
Keep, oh, keep the young heart open  
Always to the breath of God!  
All true trophies of the ages  
Are from mother-love impearled;  
For the hand that rocks the cradle  
Is the hand that rules the world. _

_--William Ross Wallace, What Rules the World_

* * *

It wasn't the first time she'd pretended this monster was her son. But the fact that she had to pretend he was her first born, her _Nathan_, made it one of the hardest things she had ever done.

Against the backdrop of numerous sins and crimes, betrayals and horrors that made up her past, a statement like that might cause one to wonder about Angela Petrelli's memory. Sadly, her recollections were as sharp as ever. It honed the sharp and jagged edge of pain that dominated her new life with her "son". It dangled in front of her nose sharp, vivid images of the child she'd bourn, the boy she'd raised, the man she'd watched emerge from her home. The man she'd held a final time, sobbing and clutching his still body.

Yet sometimes it was the memory of her own black deeds that did her the most damage. Late at night, when such things gnawed at her soul, the feeling would slip into her heart like a knife that the hell she now lived was no less than she deserved.

Maybe, if she allowed the tears to come to her eyes they might blur the world before her and she could forget. She didn't dare. To act like a woman in mourning was to alert her son—her brilliant, perceptive, _calculating _son—that something was wrong. If she allowed those tears, they could just as easily wash the illusion away.

She'd had that dream, once. Nathan had come to her through her tears, to hold her, to give her comfort. But where the moist runnels of her sorrow fell on him, things began to warp and blister, bleed and run like paint until the monster lay exposed before her. Coal black eyes, blood-red mind, and a razor smile promising her pain had only begun. A real dream, she told herself, a simple nightmare hiccupping the day's concerns to the dreamer at night. She told herself this was so. She begged.

So she buried her grief beneath every smile, every wave, every success and failure, every memory of Nathan she could managed to conjure, and let it rot deep underground. It was just enough. Just enough and she could smile, and wave, and succeed and fail, and pretend that her heart wasn't underground. Like him. Rotting deeply.


	4. With a Whimper

He felt like he was sinking.

His eyes were still locked upon themselves within his reflection when his left hand loosened its grip upon the edge of the sink. It moved slowly, rising to trace his features in the cool surface of the mirror. The right was soon to join it, palms flattening, fingers spread wide against the cold glass to frame his face. Nathan was helpless to stop them, for he could not move. He could only watch as his face took on a peculiar and disquieting blankness of expression. The pounding in his chest, the flickering light of sheer terror that dawned briefly in the eyes that stared back were all that were really him.

The corner of his mouth drew up in the barest shadow of a smirk. Then the image in front of him rippled. Soon there was nothing of Nathan left there at all.

It was a disconcerting experience looking into the mirror and feeling someone else stare back. That was one sentiment to which they could both agree. If in the back of the monster's mind any piece of Nathan Petrelli survived at all, it would soon bear witness to sights infinitely more disturbing.


	5. Snapshot

It wasn't as poor a fit as he once might have imagined. In the end it was a matter of simple geometry, of pieces interlocking together to create a picturesque whole.

His right arm clasped lightly around Heidi's waist as she smiled plastically, bright. She was leaning into him—slightly, but not _too_ close. The calculated show of intimacy was so hot and cold he almost admired it. The two boys stood in front holding polite smiles like well-trained dogs. His left arm hung around Claire's shoulder. Peter stood on Heidi's right. Angela and Noah bound them in like book ends, each beside their children. That struck him as particularly fitting. After all, in their own way they were the mother and father of this sick little family unit, this lie. Their painted masks of familial warmth, each perfected by years of deception, put even Heidi's practiced publicity smile to shame.

They were both well aware of who he truly was, he was certain by now. Though, he was left to wonder whether they realized that _he_ was in on the joke as well. That uncertainly had quickly evolved into a tense dance of restrained hints and clever denials. It was a new sort of game altogether from the old, perilous and thrilling. Even those unaware of its play could become pawns.

It had been Claire's idea to include Noah in the photograph, of course. For his part, he'd been unable to repress the ghost of his old smirk as he supported her invitation. Insisted. As subtle as it was, the expression had been a challenge he was sure Noah could not have missed—but he could not afford to answer it either. A dangerous maneuver, flirting with exposure, but the shadow of revulsion that had flitted briefly through Bennet's eyes had been so worth it.

Peter and Claire. He knew _their_ ignorance is not feigned. Lovely, vibrant, Claire's smile was so sweet and bright. One would never believe her capable of murderous hatred if they hadn't seen it. Of course, _he_ had. At times that memory—her fierce, violent beauty—burned like a searing beacon when so much else in his past seemed to elude him. Peter, always a slave to his own emotions, wore a sincere smile that would have been impossible for the man had he knowingly stood beside his brother's widow. Their comparative innocence in all of this was near farcical. Almost endearing.

Moments before the shutter clicked, he struggled against the mischievous urge to drop the façade altogether. Their imagined reactions of horror and rage flashed through his mind, almost too enticing to resist. But the moment passed, the light flashed, and things developed as they must. It was a very pretty picture indeed, of a family whose smiles hid how broken they really were, and at the center Nathan Petrelli hiding one shark's grin under another.

What did it really matter, after all, if he spent a few years as Nathan? Just a decade. Maybe two or three. The fact was that he had an eternity ahead of him. He and Claire. The fingers of his left hand curled possessively on her shoulder.

He had the time to waste on trifles.


	6. Infidelity

Their reconciliation had been awkward, almost forced. It had been plain to both of them just how greatly the time had changed him. Neither of them could pretend with any ease that he was the same man she'd married. But in many ways he was still the same—an ambitious man, a powerful man, important. It had been, in part, what attracted her to him in the first place. That part attracted her still, even if many of the other passions that had once simmered between them had grown cold and dead with their separation. They'd labored for months, their efforts sometimes delicate sometimes brutal, attempting to rekindle the spark that had warmed their marriage bed.

It had all fallen so flat, so far from their expectations.

They continued to play their parts, smiling and false, for his image, for their children, each resigned to bland, mutual dissatisfaction.

Then, over the past few weeks he had become aware of an abrupt change in her. Had? He had returned his flagging attention to the ailing bond between them, hopeful that she had somehow caught hold of what they'd been searching for. But whatever she had found for herself it lingered painfully beyond his grasp. It had not been difficult for him to infer the cause…

"Who is he?"

He supposed it was the lot of adulterers to live with suspicion. To suffer jealousy and the niggling fear that their mates were subject to the same weaknesses. After all, what a man could believe of himself, he could easily believe of other people. That didn't make it truth, of course, but he'd been so certain. It had come together slowly, like he was seeing how each piece fit together. He thought he could see the shape of the missing piece as clear as day. What he saw was a younger man, very different from himself. He considered Peter with a flash of anger, but discarded the thought. This was someone new to her, someone exciting who made her feel alive again. Someone _dangerous_.

And yet…

Her blue eyes held his firmly, her voice a tense, fragile whisper as she answered, "There is only _you_."

And while he felt with a conviction he did not understand that she wasn't lying, some part of him still believed she was not telling the truth. Not completely. It confused him all the more because he was never uncertain of things like that these days. But his heart was pierced by a sliver of doubt, and he was forced to abandon his accusations. Left confounded. Left frustrated. It bothered him to no end.

At night as he lay next to her his thoughts often dwelt upon that other, the stranger whose presence he felt sharing their bed. While she slept on peacefully, the consuming wrath would boil violently under his skin until he felt he would burst. It was in the deepest pits of his rage that Nathan sometimes imagined he could _feel_ the other's intrusion, his essence drawing closer as though physically lurking in the darkness beyond his sight. So close… On the very edge of sleep, he would hear a dark chuckle or a mocking voice whispering in his ear. It was only ever as his consciousness ebbed away into devouring black oblivion that, for the span of a heartbeat, he could manage to grasp the truth, always forgotten upon waking.

He had no one to blame but himself…


End file.
